Milky Chance – Singer-Songwriter Folk & Indietronic from Germany

Hi it’s me again. Pauline. Eastside Intern and lover of local music.

Maybe you remember my web post four weeks ago, where I introduced myself and my home city Kassel to you.

Now I want to present two musicians from Kassel to you – Clemens Rehbein and Philipp Dausch, aka Milky Chance, who are enchanting whole Europe with their Pop-Folk music right now.

“We were young souls on the junk-yard, now we are stunned minds full of junk-goods”

This song – Flashed Junk Mind – marks the beginning of their whole career. In early 2012, just right in the middle of their school exams, they uploaded it to YouTube and named themselves Milky Chance (Which has not got an exact meaning according to an interview, they once gave). Within one year their video received more than 500,000 clicks and instead of travelling around after they finished school, as they actually planned to do, they were able to start a serious music career in summer 2012.

All of the songs from their first album Sadnecessary were developed in the past two years, but Philipp and Clemens are making music together since they are 12. At school for example they played in a Jazz-Quartet called the Flown Tones, with whom they already played a few gigs around Kassel.

Now they are playing gigs all around Germany – all sold out. They participated in two popular music festivals in Germany (“Musikschutzgebiet”, “Dockville”) and in 2014 they will start their first tour through Europe.

Music made in the nursery and spread on facebook

Philipp and Clemens always wanted to do the whole big thing by their own. Starting with writing their own songs, recording and mixing them at home in the cellar and uploading them to YouTube. Though they had many offers from major record labels, they also founded their own record label with a few friends, called Lichtdicht Records,  and then released their first album Sadnecessary in May 2013.  Now their first single Stolen Dance is in charts since August and it is unbelievable how fast they made their way from a cellar in a 200,000 inhabitant’s city in the middle of Germany all the way around Europe, spreading their individual, own kind of music.

According to the music blog Hypemachine they were the most blogged musicians worldwide in June 2013. That clearly shows how the internet influenced their way to success. Starting on YouTube, and then spread on Facebook and different blogs, they were able to gain more and more popularity in a few months.

One day, when they were playing a gig in Kassel, four hours before the announced time there was already a huge line in front of the small club, their performance should take place – and that happened before they released anything. Everybody just knew about them because of Facebook and YouTube.

So obviously there must be a good thing about the internet and all the social networking we are addicted to in modern times.

Completing this fast way to success Milky Chance now got their first nomination for a German music prize with their first single Stolen Dance.

“Milky Chance gives you the opportunity to relax, to feel and to let all your worries go away. Music, that really goes into your body, making you move, not pushing, but letting you drift away from everyday life.”

(Aurelio Ghiradelli for Lichtdicht Records)

As this quote describes, Milky Chance offer us a completely new sound, totally different to the normal mainstream Pop sound we can listen to everywhere these days, but though attractive to people of all ages.

“Danceable Melancholy”

Clemens writes all of their songs by himself and prefers to just hang around in his room or in the cellar with his guitar, letting the experiences of everyday life inspire him to new songs. This is how he creates this emotional and danceable songs, full of feelings everybody has or just “Danceable Melancholy” how he once described his music.

“Like Tom Waits on Speed”

Another interesting fact is that Clemens once said in an interview, that he is trying to listen to less music as possible, because that would be the easiest way for him to invent own melodies.

But when you read portraits about Milky Chance or hear people talking about their style of music, they are always described with other popular musicians. For example as “the new Bob Marley”, “Tom Waits on Speed” or “Jack Johnson mixed up with electronic beats”.

Everybody has to get an own opinion of the music Milky Chance are playing, but it is true, that they offer us the sunny feeling of the reggae music we know from Bob Marley, surrounded by a dominant guitar, partnered with a special, rough voice we know from Jack Johnson, and jazzed up with electronic beats and percussions.

So Clemens and Philipp really made their way from their small home studio in Kassel all around Europe and maybe soon all around the world, as a guy on their Facebook page begs them to come to Montreal. And maybe we will welcome them some day in Sydney, about 15,000 km away from where they started last year.